Category Archives: Climate

Earth is still the only planet we know where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and the water is vital for all known forms of life. Rain brings life: it is a major component of the water cycle (also known as the hydrologic cycle, the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth) and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. Here are the top ten wettest places on Earth.

While the New York city suffers the coldest Valentine’s Day in 100 years, as East Coast is hit with a record-low wind chill of -36 °F (-37.77 °C), the Whiteface Mountain reached -114 °F (-81.11 °C) wind chill at its summit. And it was even colder than the windchill in Antarctica.

Whiteface Mountain is the fifth-highest mountain in the U.S. state of New York. On Saturday night (February 13-14, 2016), the Arctic winds blew at 45 mph (72.4205 km/h) at the summit, and according to the U.S. National Weather Service, it was actually colder than Antarctica on Sunday. It’s probably one of the lowest temperatures ever recorded outside of the poles of Earth.

Our planet is getting warmer every year, and the horrible fact is, global warming is accelerating. As a natural result, the glaciers are melting at an increasing speed.

Almost 10% of the world’s land surface is currently covered with glaciers, mostly in places like Greenland and Antarctica. The amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth (332,500,000 cubic miles, or 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers), but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7%, is held in ice caps and glaciers. And if all land ice melted the seas would rise about 70 meters (about 230 feet).

What if all these ice melted? What would Earth look like? Alex Kuzoian of Business Insider prepared a video showing the effects of the global melting, and if it happens, “this would dramatically reshape the continents and drown many of the world’s major cities.”

Earth has a mild climate, which enables the life on its surface. But there are some places exist which probably you won’t want to be there, at least uncovered. Here are the hottest and coldest places of our planet.

Earth, the blue planet: the oceans combined with the atmosphere makes the planet look blue. So its color mainly comes from water. About 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, in fact, Earth is still the only planet we know where water can exist in liquid form on the surface. Water is also vital for all known forms of life. But there are numerous places on Earth that receive rainfall less than even 0.76 mm annually. One place even receives absolutely no rainfall. Here are the top ten driest places on Earth.